In recent years, digital music has become available to many people. For example, technology developments have allowed people to listen to audio such as digital music on personal audio devices. The consumers' increasing preference for audio such as digital music has also resulted in the integration of personal audio devices into mobile telephones (e.g., smart phones) and other mobile devices (e.g., tablet computers). The portability of these devices has enabled people to bring their music experience with them anywhere and at any time. Furthermore, people have become able to consume streamed audio such as streamed digital music in their homes through the use of their computers or similar devices. Thanks to the rapid development in communication network technology which has increased the speed and reliability with which audio can be streamed over computer networks, the usage of and listening to streamed audio in home environments has also increased in recent years.
In recent years, various systems and methods for networked audio playback have also been developed. Wired or wireless networks can be used to connect one or more multimedia playback devices for a home or other location playback network (e.g., a home music system). Certain systems and methods provide automatic configuration of parameters of a playback device to be coupled to a network with reduced or minimum human intervention. For example, a wired and/or wireless ad-hoc network may be established to facilitate communications among a group of devices. Music and/or other multimedia content can therefore be shared among devices and/or groups of devices (also sometimes referred to as zones) associated with a playback network. Certain systems and methods thus facilitate streaming of music (or otherwise providing of music) from a music-playing application (e.g., browser-based application, native music player, other multimedia application, and so on) to a multimedia content playback system (e.g., Sonos™).
Even though it is common that today's multimedia playback devices (e.g., audio playback devices such as speakers) have direct access to the network and different content providers (e.g. Spotify®) these devices are typically dependent on a connected screen based device (e.g., a mobile phone or a tablet computer) to interact and control the various multimedia play back devices. The screen based devices typically include touch-sensitive display screens that allow users to interact with and send commands to control the connected multimedia play back device(s) for playback of multimedia. Touch-sensitive display screens are generally perceived as attractive, e.g., because they are intuitive to users. Thus touch-sensitive display screens are also perceived as user-friendly.